How to check if your email is part of Ashley Madison's hack

Avid Life Media Inc., the parent company of Ashley Madison, a matchmaking website for cheating spouses, said it was hacked and that the personal information of some of its users was posted online.

Are you on the list?

Adultery website Ashley Madison was hacked on Tuesday by a group called “The Impact Team,” who then exposed users of the site by leaking their emails on the Dark Web-which can be accessed via Tor browsers.

Several websites took the leaked information and began creating searchable databases that let anyone type in an email to see if it’s part of the Ashley Madison dump. Some of those websites include Trustify and cynic.al.

If you type in any email and it’s part of the database it could mean one of three things: the email owner is an active member of the site, the email owner created an account but doesn’t use it or someone used that person’s email to create a fake account.

The searchable databases only confirms if the email was entered into the adultery website, but it does not indicate usage of an account or any other details that could expose a user’s potential affair. However, if The Impact Team gathered more data from the hack, they’d be able to tell what preferences the user has, transactions made and where they live.

Along with the 36 million emails that were taken, analysts say that other personal data was also stolen by the hackers. By the numbers, hackers took 33 million first and last names, street addresses and phone numbers; and 9.6 million documented credit card transactions.

Analysts have confirmed that data is legit. Most analysts and tech experts are still combing through the data, but it’s possible emails are not the only compromised information.